Oil field exploration and the drilling industry access and impact water resources. In Canada, ownership of surface and ground water resources are vesting the Province. Hence, provincial legislation is typically in place to manage and protect water resources. Under growing water demand and changing climate requires adaptation and preparedness to effectively address future water resource challenges. Water is taken from rivers, lakes, and aquifers for a variety of human purposes. It is essential to agriculture, hydroelectric and non-hydro power generation, oil and gas production, as well as drinking supply. Such water uses or diversions are typically managed through licenses issued under provincial Water Acts, which specify restrictions.
Water is a critical component in the recovery and processing of petroleum and natural gas reserves. Drilling rigs are used to reach the oil and gas. Rigs extensively use water to make a special fluid called “mud.” The mud helps bring drilled rock chips to the surface and keeps the drill cool from friction against the rock. An average in situ project uses roughly half a barrel (80 liters) of freshwater to produce a barrel of oil. It is reported that an average oil sands surface mine uses between two and five barrels of freshwater to produce a barrel of oil.
Proper regulatory oversight is intended to ensure water sourcing, transportation, recycling, storage, and disposal are managed effectively to mitigate risks to surface water and non-saline groundwater sources.
Licenses to divert water define terms and conditions appurtenant to the legal land location of a point of diversion that must be followed once issued. These terms and conditions are meant to control the potential for adverse effects to the source of water. Typical terms and conditions are maximum volume limits, percent flow restrictions and maximum diversion rates appurtenant to points of diversion and points of use; as well as monitoring, recording and reporting requirements. These terms and conditions are imposed by provincial governments and determined through data and research.
Applicant is aware of several water management data collection systems. These are typically mobile units which are placed at diversion points of water sources which monitor and record the water diverted from that point. Some of these “pump houses” or “pump stations” contain data transmission devices which remotely provide real-time information from each event at that water source.
However, such systems do not efficiently monitor and record water diverted by water hauling vehicles on drilling operations and particularly in situation in which water sources are changed once or twice a week. In such cases, current water monitoring practices within drilling operations rely on human estimations and produce extremely inaccurate data collection. In turn, these inaccuracies generate unreliable analysis and reporting thus negatively affecting all other strategies developed to safeguard our water resources.
Applicant is not aware of safeguards preventing a water hauler operator from diverting water from an unlicensed water source, nor of any safeguards preventing that water hauler operator from depositing the water in a location other than the licensed point of use.
Maximum water volume and diversion rates pursuant to the license are estimated by the water hauling operator. The operator estimates the water volume diverted and estimates the time it took to divert that volume then calculates a diversion rate based on those estimates; furthermore, there is no monitoring that the diversion limit or diversion rate pursuant to the license was actually followed. Neither environmental technicians nor government enforcement agents able to be present throughout all water diversion events.
Accordingly, to date, the onus is completely on the water hauler operator to perform water diversion in a legally compliant manner. Water hauler operators are often among the least trained persons with regards to regulatory compliance requirements and reliance on the operator entails a high risk of non-compliance as a result of human error.
Accordingly, a system and method is needed to overcome the deficiencies of conventional water diversion for drilling operations namely to better manage the terms and conditions of licenses with regards to controlled removal and placement of water as well as well as monitoring, recording and reporting requirements.